Tim Berne presents ‘Snakeoil’
Tim Berne is the saxophonist as lone wolf—a rangy and determinedly individualistic composer/improviser who has for 30-plus years lived far from the jazz mainstream and skirted the edges of the avant-garde. He’s been a presence in aficionado venues in New York, North America and beyond, and has just embarked on an 11-city U.S. tour, with a promising quartet performance at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art Feb. 17, to be followed by nine March gigs in Europe.
With a new album—Snakeoil, his 41st as a leader—issued by the prestigious and well-distributed label ECM, Berne may be poised for a breakthrough. But that’s seldom how things work now, however worthy the sound.
Most careers in the jazz arts gain stature gradually. Few saxophonist-composer-improviser-bandleaders attain anything like culture-wide name recognition, much less make their way into the national soundtrack. An artist who demonstrates creative originality and determined productivity will attract a coterie of collaborators and protégés and perhaps a cultish following. What their music has to offer a general audience will be discovered eventually, if at all.
Berne also has a sound of his own as an instrumentalist and composer. His music has many dimensions: solemn, beseeching, sometimes expressing deep tenderness, sometimes urgent to the point of rage. Pieces often contain both minutely detailed episodes and open-ended, “free” parts. They are typically long (on Snakeoil they run from seven and a half to more than 14 minutes) and develop unpredictably, true to their own unique forms.
If Berne seems to be instinctively resistant to being tied down, he welcomes the contributions of bandmates. Early on, trumpeter Herb Robertson was his most significant countervoice; more recently, pianist Craig Taborn, whose solo album Avenging Angel (also on ECM) made many critics’ Top 10 lists in 2011, influenced Berne’s direction.
“Craig is the master of making simple grooves sound like the end of the world—in a good way,” Berne said in a recent telephone interview. One distinctive element of Snakeoil is that Berne’s alto sax several times takes off jaggedly over repeated patterns, akin to contemporary music’s minimalism.
“I don’t listen to minimalist composers much, but I like getting a lot out of a little,” he explained. “I like repetition, the trance element. When Philip Glass repeats the same three notes for 20 minutes, you either get bored or transported—the attitude you have toward it really changes the effect. I like the feel of phrasing that I can push, where something happens the more I play it. We have one piece that in concert can keep repeating at the end for five minutes or more. I love that.”
Even so, Berne’s ensemble—also called Snakeoil—is not pattern-bound. On the record, clarinetist Oscar Noriega shadows Berne’s alto but then stretches out on his own. There’s no bassist in Snakeoil; pianist Matt Mitchell solos and comps in an un-swinging, classical-referent idiom while drummer Ches Smith focuses on dynamics and percussion timbres as much as rhythmic drive. Yet, like every good jazz group, the band constructs and sustains admirable rapport.
And the overall picture is the point. Rather than starting with a display of dazzling sax virtuosity, Snakeoil begins with a quiet, time-free piano introduction. Berne himself doesn’t play a note for three minutes.
“I’m not big on hitting audiences with the hook right up front,” he said. “I don’t want to see the end of the movie at the beginning.” Does such reserve puzzle listeners? “They’re either there or not,” the lone wolf shrugged. He ventures towards us. Are we ready for him?
Reach the author at jazzmandel@gmail.com.
